Yes, Bowser remarkable that you can get me to agree with Tom: Another thoughtful post.

It hasn't been lost on me that most critiques of the present mess are phrased as comparisons with the previous site. I was honestly reluctant to believe that I'd come anywhere close to perfection, for reasons ranging from a natural humility (seriously) to a desire to keep pushing myself to try.

The previous design wasn't perfect, really; rather, it was minimalist, attempting only one thing, and, it seems, doing that one thing rather well. Minimalism, because it fixes the focus on the one thing, weeds out the failures quickly and allows the one thing done well to survive a long time without being undermined by clutter competing for attention.

In stark contrast to this place. I get it, Bowser. The obvious thing I've been slow to see is that my goal right now should be simply to reproduce the previous design.

I'm working on the problem in fits and starts. If you click on the name of each forum in the top menu (don't pull down the menu) you go to the section front page. I created a forum TOC plugin for Damned Tikiwki trying to get a tree-shaped display. As of this posting, it's a tree on my office system, but only descends two levels installed here. Weird. But the point is to explain that as soon as I can, we're going back to a design that consists basically of a front page, a page for each forum, and messages viewed separately. I'm not removing the ancillary things like the image galleries, but moving off to the side. Oh, yeah, and I agree with your dissection of the crap in the left and right columans. We don't need two sets of menus. Eventually this site will bear a strong and reassuring resemblance to the old site.

The Flash interface is a few days behind; still some things I need to clean up before I ask you to rely on it. It's a true tree, and utilizes Damn Tikiwiki's view-tracking database to preserve the visual indication of what you've read and haven't read. I'll set it up so that everybody can individually select whether to use the original Damn Tikiwiki interface; the interim HTML tree I'm installing on section front pages; and the Flash UI.

Well, you did post on GeekSpeak, after all...

The social lesson is important too. The community was bruised by the too-radical/too-fast change of environment. If I'd had more time to prepare, I'd have gone exactly the other way, starting with a close reproduction of the status quo, and then grafting on the bells and whistles. Didn't have that luxury, though, but mea culpa, having learned a lot about Damn Tikiwiki, I realize that I still could've started with only forums, albeit Damn Tikiwiki-style forums. My apologies to you and to all Zoners.